Audio maker Raycon has today unveiled the company’s first pair of bone conduction headphones, replete with water and dust protection, decent battery life, and low latency.
Like all of the best bone conduction headphones on the market, the Raycon Bone Conduction Headphones are designed to pipe audio to your eardrums using vibrations emitted into your skull. It’s a slightly strange prospect for the uninitiated, but bone conduction headphones are extremely popular with runners, cyclists, and commuters. They’re often lighter and more comfortable than many of the best headphones on the market, especially for those who struggle with the rubber tips of in-ear headphones. Furthermore, they let you listen to music and podcasts while retaining awareness of your surroundings.
Keeping up the trend, Raycon says its new Bone Conduction Headphones are designed for tough workouts and outdoor adventure. They feature an open-ear design and are designed to sit comfortably behind your ears. Retailing at $99 (UK and AU pricing tbc), they’re not as pricey as some options on the market, so what features can users expect?
Raycon Bone Conduction headphones: The rundown
Raycon says its Bone Conduction Headphones are rated for IP68 water and protection, so they can handle sweat, dust, and rain. They can’t be used in the pool or the sea for swimming, so they won’t be joining the ranks of the best waterproof headphones anytime soon, despite the fact that many swimming headphones are also bone conduction.
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They feature environmental noise cancellation during calls to cut out distant background noise and ultra-low latency of 60ms ensures a snappy Bluetooth connection with less lag, making them more suited to watching videos.
They also feature multipoint connectivity so you can bounce between two devices easily, such as a phone and tablet, without re-pairing or connecting each time. Battery life is rated for 14 hours of use at 50% volume, and a 10-minute quick charge will give you an hour of playtime.
The headband is made of a combination of steel and rubber that Raycon says provides strength, stability, and security during workouts. Audio-wise, they come with three sound profiles (Bass, Balanced, and Pure Sound) so you can choose a listening style that suits you. They also feature button controls for on-the-fly adjustments, and calls are made by way of two built-in microphones that also support Siri and Alexa.
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Raycon’s Bone Conduction Headphones are available from RayconGlobal.com today for $99.99.
The Federal Communications Commission that it will open a renewed investigation into broadband data caps and how they impact both consumer experience and company competition. The FCC is soliciting from consumers about their experiences with capped broadband service. The agency also opened a formal to collect public comment that will further inform its actions around broadband data caps.
“Restricting consumers’ data can cut off small businesses from their customers, slap fees on low-income families and prevent people with disabilities from using the tools they rely on to communicate,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said. “As the nation’s leading agency on communications, it’s our duty to dig deeper into these practices and make sure that consumers are put first.”
This topic has been a hot one of late, and the FCC launched another about the practice of capping Internet access last year. In April 2024, the agency successfully required that ISPs offer clear on their service plans, detailing additional fees, discounts, and upload and download speeds. Data caps could also come under additional fire as the FCC attempts to , which classify broadband as an essential service. Returning net neutrality has not been a simple journey, however, as the agency faces from broadband providers.
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Do you use ChatGPT regularly? Do you have the “memory” feature turned on — which allows the chatbot from OpenAI to recall important information about you and your preferences?
If so, navigate over to it when you have a free moment and enter in the following question:
“From all of our interactions what is one thing that you can tell me about myself that I may not know about myself?”
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The question was proposed and suggested first on the social network X by Tom Morgan, founder of The Leading Edge newsletter and former director of client communications and marketing at Sapient Capital wealth management.
The answers ChatGPT provides in response to this prompt may surprise and even move you in their insight into your character and work style. Presumably, it could work with other AI chatbots and assistants with persistent memory, such as Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 3.5.
For example, here’s what it responded when I asked it this very question (using the GPT-4o model, the default paid one).
Other users have reported similarly, moving, insightful responses.
Even OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman remarked on the trend on his account on X, stating “love this” and quote posting Morgan’s original post.
Yet others, such as AI researcher and expert Simon Willison, disagree that the trend reveals anything particularly insightful about the user. Posting on X as well, Willison likened the responses to a “horoscope generator.”
However, I disagree with this take as at least in my case — and presumably for all those who have ChaGPT’s memory feature enabled (read how to turn it on here) — the chatbot is taking into account whatever is stored in its memory to answer you, and even if it does not derive insights from every single interaction you have with it, it clearly knows information about you that it can use to attempt some sort of value-judgement and introspective answer (as evidenced by the fact that my response noted I was a journalist).
Still others have posted variations on the original question proposed by Morgan, noting the curious user would do well to check out the variation in responses by switching the underlying model powering ChatGPT from the default GPT-4o or 4o mini to OpenAI’s new o1 preview reasoning model.
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Others have altered the prompt to receive brutal criticism and honesty.
And still others have completely other ideas for questions you could ask the chatbot, such as requesting it “roast” you in the style of a Comedy Central special.
Regardless of which style question you decide to ask ChatGPT, or any AI chatbot for that matter, regular users might find it interesting, amusing, and potentially revealing to learn what the chatbot says it knows about you — and more importantly, it may inspire you to think differently about yourself today.
Altogether, the interest in using AI models to find out more about ourselves and our own habits reveals how much potential they have, far beyond simply assisting with work or school assignments. Indeed, as the generative AI era approaches its 2nd year anniversary (since the November 2022 launch of ChatGPT), this question and the others like it show just how much AI has become embedded into the fabric of our lives and society, and how the more we use it, the more interesting new uses for it people find.
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Inversion Space has become the third company to receive a spacecraft reentry license from the Federal Aviation Administration, paving the way for the startup to launch and return its tech pathfinder mission for orbital delivery later this year.
The three-year-old startup has ambitions of transforming space into a new “transportation layer for Earth” using ultra-fast, on-demand cargo deliveries to anywhere on Earth from orbit. The Ray vehicle is the first hardware Inversion will be sending to space. Mounted on an oven-sized bus, the actual Ray capsule is only about twice the size of a Frisbee — much smaller than the company’s full-scale spacecraft. But the mission will still put much of the final tech to the test.
According to a draft environmental assessment (EA) of Inversion’s plans released by the FAA in May, the aluminum Ray capsule “contains and is intended to test and demonstrate many of Inversion’s custom developed systems that allow for a decreased cost and increased cadence of reentry space capsules.”
The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation issued the vehicle operator license for Inversion’s Ray under new Part 450 regulations designed to modernize spacecraft licensing. It joins SpaceX and Varda on the short list of operators with approval to reenter spacecraft, though only Varda was also approved under Part 450 regs. The new regulatory framework was finalized in 2020 to streamline the licensing process for satellite and rocket operators, though there have been a fair number of critics that question whether Part 450 has achieved that goal. The licensing process for Inversion’s Ray took 18 months, a spokesperson said.
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The new license gives Inversion a green light to return the Ray capsule back to Earth for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. Ray, which will launch on SpaceX’s Transport-12 rideshare mission (likely sometime this month), will spend between one to five weeks in space, Inversion CEO Justin Fiaschetti said in a previous interview with TechCrunch.
The reentry would occur in two stages, the EA says: First, the capsule would deploy a drogue parachute when Ray is traveling at around Mach 2 and help the capsule decelerate from supersonic speed. When the capsule is around 6,000 feet above sea level, the main parachute will deploy, and the capsule will slow to 15.5 miles per hour to splash down.
The craft will then activate a recovery buoy that will broadcast the capsule’s location to Inversion’s mission control center, and a team will go recover the 41-pound capsule from the water.
Following the Ray demonstration missions, Inversion plans to introduce a larger vehicle named Arc and launch that as early as 2026, though this will require a separate license.
Meta is adding an “activity status” to Threads so that you can see who’s actively online as you’re scrolling your feed. In a post, Threads boss Adam Mosseri pitches it as a “way to help you find others to engage with in real-time.” The activity status will show up next to your profile picture in the feed and on your profile, based on screenshots Mosseri shared.
Fortunately, if you don’t want people to know when you’re online, you don’t have to share that. “Only people who have activity status turned on will be able to see when you’re online, and you can turn this off within your settings at any time,” Mosseri says.
I can’t currently find how to turn on the feature. It might be user error, but I’m guessing it just hasn’t rolled out to me yet. Even when I get it, I’ll probably be keeping it off.
The Shazam Band is a new AI-powered collar containing speakers and sensors that lets your pet talk to you, just like the dogs in the Pixar movie UP can. Once your pet is wearing the band you can have a conversation with it, and the band emits a human voice in response to your questions.
You can also use the Shazam Band to track your pet if they wander off, and it will alert you via text message if they get into danger, say from other animals or traffic, or if they got left behind somewhere. You can find them using the Shazam app and the GPS inside the band.
A real life UP
Ever since the Pixar film UP came out in 2009 people have been trying to make a real-life version of a collar that lets your pet talk to you. Back in 2021 TechRadar even interviewed the makers of Petpuls, one of the first AI-powered dog collars that aimed to give your pet a voice.
So far though, nobody has really managed to crack a talking pet collar, but Shazam aims to get humans and animals talking once and for all. To find out more we met with John McHale, CEO of Personifi AI, the company behind Shazam. John explained that he got the idea for using AI to help pets communicate after his dog, Roscoe, got bitten by a rattlesnake, and nearly died because he didn’t know what had happened. “It got me thinking about AI and how the tragedy could have been averted and it became clear that we could apply AI in such a way that if Roscoe got bit by a rattlesnake, even if I wasn’t present, he could have texted me and notified me right away that he had had a rattlesnake encounter. That was the genesis of Shazam.”
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Sentience augmentation
Shazam works for any type of pet that can fit the collar, so think dog, cat, goat, or whatever four-legged friend you have running around your house. It works by using AI, trained on large data sets in a similar way to the way ChatGPT is trained.
The band contains a number of sensors, in particular, it seems to listen to the words that you say to your pet and react to them, but also interprets the kinematic behaviors of your pet. The result is that the Shazam Band provides what McHale calls “sentience augmentation”. What that means is it articulates your pet’s mood, experience, and responses back to you – as they’re happening – with little sound bites like “I’m feeling sad right now” and “You know I’m down to snuggle”. The idea is that you start to get into having a conversation with your pet and over time it learns and becomes more natural.
The million dollar question, of course, is does it actually work? I had a live demo of Shazam by the Personifi AI team in Texas, and I still don’t quite know what to make of it. John McHale demonstrated with his own dog, Roscoe, who was wearing the Shazam Band and I got to hear the dog ‘speak’.
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Without getting to test the device on my own pet it’s really hard to say how well it works, but in the demo, we saw Roscoe’s Shazam collar successfully interpret when his owner was happy or sad, and produce the appropriate responses. Also when McHale wrestled a dog toy in Roscoe’s mouth, much to his delight, his collar came out with Captain America’s famous catchphrase, “I could do this all day!”.
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They do say you should never work with children and animals, and during the live demo, Roscoe was clearly not in the mood for fun times. He preferred to lie on the sofa, but it’s impossible not to smile when hearing a dog ‘talk’ for the first time, especially since the voices have all been voiced by comedic actors. Many are voiced by Bobby Johnson, AKA RxCKStxR, a social media celebrity renowned for giving pets a voice online.
Pick a persona
There are 25 different personas you can choose between for your pet, and each one is effectively a different voice. During your first 30 days of owning the Shazam Band, you get to try them all out before you have to settle on the persona that best suits your pet. We heard a lovable goofball, a witty southern belle, and a fast-talking mafia boss. Does one of those sound like your pet?
There were a couple of options for the international market, too – there was one British voice (male and posh, think Hugh Grant) and a female Spanish voice. Most striking was the Jamaican voice, which used a Patois.
Considering how crazy people get about their pets, the potential for Shazam is clearly huge, and once we get our hands on one in November we’ll bring you a full review. The ethical considerations of anthropomorphizing your pet still need to be considered, but as a cat owner, I would love to be able to find out what my cat actually wants when he looks at me, purrs, and meows. Is it attention? Is it food? Is it playtime? It would be very useful to know.
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Ultimately, I’m left feeling slightly undecided by the whole talking pet situation. It was certainly fun for the owner, but I do wonder what Roscoe thought of it all. He seemed pretty happy with voices coming from his collar, but it’s not like he had a choice in the matter. What if he’s a dog that doesn’t want to be anthropomorphized? I guess that despite the inroads Shazam makes into human and animal interactions, we’ll never really be able to ask him.
The Shazam Band is available for pre-order in two different versions. The full GPS-enabled band costs $595 and a less fully-featured $495 version is available from shazampet.com.
All of us talk to our pets, but what if our pets could talk back? That’s the premise of Personifi AI’s Shazam Band, a wearable that puts your pet’s mood, movements, and emotions into words. By using AI, it actually makes a two-sided conversation possible.
If all this sounds crazy, it’s only the beginning of what makes the Shazam Band one of the maddest pieces of tech we’ve seen in a while. And if I hadn’t actually seen it working, I doubt I’d believe it was real.
Shazam (no, not that one) comes in two sizes, one for a dog and one suitable for cats, and is worn like a collar. It contains various sensors, including a 6-axis gyroscope, GPS, temperature sensor, speaker, and microphone. There’s a battery inside that lasts for several weeks on a charge and another battery in the box, so you can always have one charged up and ready to go. It uses AI to interpret your pet’s movements and actions and the tone you use when speaking to it to create verbal responses that reflect your pet’s intentions, thoughts, and personality.
I know. It sounds either staggeringly stupid or like the best thing ever, depending on your level of pet obsession. But stay with me, as it’s way better thought out than you may expect.
Wondering how Shazam interprets what your pet is thinking accurately enough to put it all into words that match your pet’s personality? The company has teamed up with Matt Beisner, a dog trainer best known for the Dog: Impossible show on Disney+, to train the AI, along with social media voice-over sensation Bobby Johnson, also known as “The RxckStxr,” and voice actor Jorjeana Marie.
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Another key member of the team is Roscoe, Personifi AI’s founder and CEO John McHale’s dog. Roscoe is one of several hundred animals that have already been training the AI. Over a short Zoom video call ahead of the announcement, I saw Roscoe interact with McHale and other members of the team through Shazam. Not just tail-wagging, bouncing-up-and-down interaction, but verbal interaction. No, I haven’t gone crazy; it’s as barking mad as it sounds.
When I spoke to McHale, it was early morning at their offices, and Roscoe had not been fed or walked and was apparently a little grumpy at being woken up. We laughed at the prospect of running a tech demo using an animal, a wearable, and an AI system interpreting its actions and operating in real time and how it was a recipe for things to go wrong. In reality, the next few moments were an eye-opening glimpse of a Dr. Doolittle-style future.
Roscoe was asked if he wanted to go for a walk and chase squirrels, as well as if he had been fed yet, all spoken in that usual rhetorical way we speak to pets. Except through Shazam, Roscoe replied. Not in that if-you-listen-hard-I-think-he-said-sausages way, but actually talked.
Well, Roscoe didn’t talk, but the words came from the speaker on the Shazam wearable and in a voice that brought out Roscoe’s lackadaisical personality. Yes, he was hungry, the squirrels were likely to get chased, and he was frustrated that none of these things had happened. The voice and style will be familiar to anyone who watches Bobby Johnson’s voice-over comedy skits.
No, I haven’t gone crazy; it’s as barking mad as it sounds.
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It was one of the most bizarre tech demos I’ve seen, and I smiled and laughed throughout, my mind flip-flopping between childish joy and complete bewilderment. You won’t be discussing Tolstoy with your Shazam-wearing pet, but you will see a new side to its personality.
However, there’s the potential for a more serious use case too. McHale explained that he got the idea after Roscoe had been bitten by a snake and managed to hide the problem, but was clearly not himself. Roscoe eventually underwent several serious surgeries and survived, but if he had been able to say he’d been bitten by a snake, then things could have been taken care of far sooner.
Even with Shazam, Roscoe is unlikely to have been able to articulate he’d been bitten by a snake, but he may have been able to vocalize that he wasn’t well in a way we could quickly understand and act upon. Any resulting vet visit would have been memorable, too, that’s for sure.
Shazam may also be able to help your pet vocalize concern for you, bringing further emotional support to the moment when they come over and check in, as they seemingly understand that you’re sad, unwell, or in need of a furry hug.
Because Shazam is AI-driven and always learning, it’s not like getting a series of canned responses that approximate emotion. It’s more like an AI chatbot, but rather than being a voice from an empty vessel, Shazam takes real emotions and your pet’s personality, or the personality you give it, and blends them into a voice, so it shouldn’t come across as something it’s not or a completely artificial fabrication. Shazam has a choice of 27 characters, each with its distinct persona and tone ranging from a witty Southern belle to a fast-talking mafia boss, plus the ability to further craft individual personality traits through the app. Several voices are available in both Spanish and Mandarin Chinese as well.
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The app also shows activity tracking data from the Shazam collar, and the built-in GPS keeps track of your pet, plus it has a geofencing feature to encourage it to stay within certain set boundaries. It does so by verbally telling the pet through the speaker that it’s going where it shouldn’t, as if it were its own subconscious, which should confuse the neighbors. You set a single voice as the primary caregiver and can program other secondary voices as well, to both add safety and keep things simple for the pet.
Putting words in your pet’s mouth is not going to be cheap. The Shazam wearable is $495 for the small version and $595 for the large version, and this includes one voice option and access to the app for a year. If you want to change voices, it’s $99 each time, and there’s a $295 subscription for every year after the first. Preorders begin on October 25, and orders will ship in February 2025.
We already recognize and try to understand our pet’s personalities and emotions. Shazam takes it to the next level by vocalizing those emotions in a language we understand. When you see it in action for the first time, it may look and sound a bit silly, but after a few moments, you will understand how much fun could be had with it and even how it could help keep your pet safe and healthy, too. How long that fun will last after the novelty has worn off is the big question. There’s also the considerable expense to find out.
Shazam is such a crazy product that you’re either going to walk away after seeing it, desperate to put in your order, or think it’s one of the most ridiculous things ever made. The voices and characters created by Personifi AI won’t be for everyone either, and the ones I heard went hard on their chosen hook — the superhero character was like an even more hyped-up Buzz Lightyear, for example. I imagine they could get quite grating. Though, if you don’t want Shazam/your pet to interrupt you, it’s as simple as saying “quiet,” just as you would normally do.
Every owner has wondered what their pet would say if it could talk, and Shazam does make it possible to somewhat answer that question. As to whether it works in the real world and outside the confines of a very short demo remains to be seen, but I came away from seeing Shazam in action thinking that there are going to be a lot of crazy cat and dog people out there who will lap this insane piece of tech up, no matter the cost.
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